Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

In the 1860s, the California mining boomtown of Bodie was alive with nouveau-riche miners, stagecoach holdups, opium dens, and prostitutes-turned-doctors. Less than sixty years later, Bodie was a ghost town with a population you could count on your hand—the ruins of which are explored in this amazing video filmed via quadrocopter.

These days, Bodie is a National Historic Landmark (also, “California’s official state gold rush town,” whatever that means), drawing a respectable number of tourists every year. Few of them get views like these, though, captured by two California videographers named Russell Brown and Aaron Grimes.

Shot using a GoPro Hero 3 mounted atop a DJI Phantom quadrocopter, the video shows Bodie just before sunset, affording us a perfect view of Bodie’s mile-long main street and abandoned buildings, including the mining machinery that made it boom in the 19th century. This month we’ve seen Cali filmmakers using drones to film parties in LA and surfers in Santa Cruz—but this ghostly view of the Golden State is almost more fun. [Vimeo]